This year at Advertising Week Europe we gave creators the chance to win a £25,000 brand deal with Adobe.
Building on the success of our debut of The Big Creator Challenge in New York, we brought this unique opportunity to creators in London.
The aim of the session is to give brands a front-row seat to what makes a strong creator concept, while giving creators – regardless of size – the opportunity to pitch their idea live for the chance to win a brand partnership.
Legacy creator Patricia Bright was our incredible guest judge. She’s been a content creator for over a decade and has built a following of over three million. She knows exactly what it takes to create a winning brand deal concept and works with Adobe.
Adobe, a long-term partner of Digital Voices globally, is deeply invested in the Creator Economy. They are core to Adobe’s audience and marketing strategy. The brand was excited for another chance to meet creators in person, explore original ideas, and discover new talent.
Advertising Week Europe brings brands, agencies, and creators all in one place, creating the perfect environment to showcase and demystify how creator-led campaigns come to life.
We opened applications ahead of the event, promoting across our channels as well as Adobe and Advertising Weeks comms.
An incredible calibre of creators responded.
From there, we shortlisted a group of creators based on creativity, strategic thinking, and alignment with the brief and brand. Follower count wasn’t the focus, as we know that smaller creators often drive the highest engagement.
Shortlisted creators were tasked with developing a concept that showcased Adobe Premiere Mobile building awareness of Premiere Mobile amongst UK creators by showing how it fits seamlessly into real creative workflows.
This campaign is about demonstrating how Premiere Mobile on iPhone helps creators save time, unlock creativity, and produce high-quality, short-form content directly from their phone, without disrupting the way they already create.
Creators had one week to develop their ideas before pitching them live at Advertising Week Europe. The focus wasn’t on executing the content, but on the strength of the concept – something that could realistically become part of a live Adobe campaign.
Five shortlisted creators pitched their ideas behind closed doors to our amazing panel of judges:
Judges provided their feedback based on their experience and expertise, and selected three finalists to pitch their concepts live on stage to an audience of 200.
Our finalists were Stan Gaskell, Shola West, and Gabriel Sey.
The range of ideas reflected the diversity of the Creator Economy. The creators all pitched different formats for different audiences, all grounded in a strong understanding of storytelling and platform-native content.
Stan is a professional videographer and captures content around extreme travel – including Hardest Geezers “Project Africa”. His concept was based around the ease of using Adobe Premiere Mobile in crazy locations, and creating a content series sponsored by the brand around a major trek.
Shola’s campaign idea was #StopScrollingCreate – a fresh take on doomscrolling. Instead of passively scrolling on your journey home, the campaign would encourages people to use that time to edit and create content, using Premiere Mobile to bring their content to life. To incentivise participation, she pitched that the best video would win a lifetime Adobe subscription, and the top 30 creators would be invited to an exclusive co working day at Adobe HQ.
What stood out was the strategic thinking. Creators demonstrated how their ideas would resonate with audiences, showcase the Adobe Premiere Mobile features, and translate into real campaigns.
The competition was extremely tough, but the judges chose Gabriel Sey as the winner. As a dad of two, Gabriel built his concept around the one thing every parent wants more of: time.
The judges were impressed with how relatable Gabriel’s approach was, as well as his humor and strong idea for executing a content series with Adobe Premiere Mobile at the heart of it.
He will now go on to develop his idea as part of a £25,000 brand partnership with Adobe.
The Big Creator Challenge is designed to do more than just spotlight talent.
It gives creators access to decision-makers, brands access to fresh thinking, and the wider industry a clearer understanding of what effective creator marketing looks like today.
For Adobe, it created a direct pipeline to emerging talent. For creators, it offered a rare opportunity to pitch on one of the industry’s biggest stages.
And for the audience, it brought the creator economy to life in real time.
Image Credits: Leoni Blue
